


The Way to See by Faith

by lovingdefiance



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Introspection, M/M, Memories, No Dialogue, Retrospective, Survivor Guilt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 04:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovingdefiance/pseuds/lovingdefiance
Summary: Certain aromas took him back; the brand of soap he had used in the academy, the shampoo, both of which were common brands that he liked because of Danganronpa’s product placement department. The lemon scent of the floor cleaner Tojo had favored, which she had liked for the same reason.A short piece. Saihara deals with intrusive thoughts.





	The Way to See by Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for angst. I normally prefer writing humor, so I apologize for writing angst instead.

Saihara lay on his back on the bed, staring at the slow whir of the ceiling fan, and allowed the thoughts to come and go. Therapy had taught him that was the way to deal with intrusive thoughts - to let them pass unchallenged instead of trying to push them away. He had already learned that such thoughts would be an indefinite part of his life. Certain aromas took him back; the brand of soap he had used in the academy, the shampoo, both of which were common brands that he liked because of _Danganronpa’s_ product placement department. The lemon scent of the floor cleaner Tojo had favored, which she had liked for the same reason.

A lot of his preferences were written for him, he had discovered. A lot of _everyone’s_ preferences were, not just for products but for other human beings. The unpleasant idea that even Chabashira’s love had been written out for her occurred to Saihara more and more intrusively every time he remembered Akamatsu’s warm hands curled around his own in the empty classroom, her eager assertions that he made her stronger. Her open admiration and support for all his useless plans. The warmth that had bloomed in his chest when he was near her. It came back to him each time he remembered Oma’s small, clumsily bandaged hand in his, the way his face had gone soft and rosy as he laughed. Oma’s avatar offering him information. Oma praising his deductions.

It was all real, he knew. They were all his real experiences, and if he ever doubted, every moment had been replicated infinite times and dispersed in box sets across the country. Sometimes, in a dark mood, he would watch them. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling fan, it was easy to think that Oma, who had clearly harmed himself to lose the knife game, was someone who had been scripted to like him. Akamatsu, whose hands in his were the long, pretty hands of a pianist and who had entrusted her dream to him, had been scripted to trust him with it. Their feelings were still as real as anything he himself felt, he patiently reminded himself, taking deep, measured breaths. The loneliness, for example. The gnawing, twisting uncertainty. The fact that it was written for his benefit didn’t mean he wasn’t really worthy of love or friendship, or so he had been told.

Watching the show gave him more information about everyone for his overactive brain to arrange in quiet moments. The story as framed by Team _Danganronpa_ glossed over mundane things - peaceful meals, everyday conversations - and let him know more about things he had never seen, made a point of displaying everyone’s talents. Oma’s cryptic investigation into the school, for instance, running parallel with Saihara’s own fumbling attempts. Everyone’s daily lives - Chabashira’s training regimen, Yumeno’s secretive repetition of what were clearly plain magic tricks. Akamatsu practicing piano, lost in a world of her own. Momota anxiously concealing his coughing fits. A special feature detailing all of Tojo’s interminable and patiently undertaken tasks.

An extra scene of Oma unwinding the clumsy bandage from his finger and folding it with strange, exacting care, placing it on the bedside table instead of in the trash. Oma’s expression, stricken and achingly hollow for a moment after Saihara angrily told him that he would always be alone, which had become a popular macro on imageboards for anything mildly disappointing. The store being out of cold medicine, for example. Only one bite of ice cream left in a carton. Being one point away from a passing grade.

From the safe, detached distance of observation through a television screen, in the form of a tidily packaged weekly digest, every moment of everyone's pain was made obvious by the edit. It was strange for Saihara to imagine himself as a person who had wanted all of it to happen. Instead he wondered how his own programming had erased that version of himself so thoroughly, if Oma’s own programming had gone so deep despite his subversion. If Saihara had pursued him, returned that interest, what would have happened? If he had, wrapping a bandage around Oma’s injured finger, understood what it meant? If, despite the impossible surroundings, he had somehow gotten closer, closer...

As always, the idea was a sick thought, giving him a revolting little thrill he never understood. That feeling was the one thing he still reflexively tried to push away. Oma was gone, though there was no crystal-clear footage of the press coming down - only the carefully set up snuff film Saihara had worked so hard to debunk, the horrible sick splatter of viscera all that was left of him. But Saihara had been in the room before and after, he knew the feel of the buttons from Keebo’s experiment, and he had reconstructed it so often in his mind’s eye that Oma’s death was like a scene he had memorized in person. He wasn’t in denial, he knew. It wasn’t a matter of wishing it hadn’t happened or thinking he could have prevented it. There was no use having thoughts like that about _any_ of the game’s victims - Amami and Akamatsu who had died for no reason at all, Tojo who had died - as she lived - for everyone’s sake, Hoshi who had been so horribly alone that Saihara still ached to think of it. There was no point.

He supposed that was it, really. As awful as it was to realize at the time, he had never been given an opportunity to reach Hoshi. He _had_ reached Akamatsu, been closer to her than anyone, as much as her decision in the end had been painful for everyone. They had never done anything with the intent to hurt one another. There was no room in his many memories of her, in love or in loss, for shame to creep poisonously in. But he imagined, sometimes, that he could have reached Oma, who had hurt him and been hurt by him. There was a disgusting part inside of him that liked the fantasy. It was something he would never tell anyone, though he thought Yumeno would probably understand. Oma, who had died alone, feeling safe with him. Oma willingly, happily opening up to him. Oma laughing and receptive and, in certain half-asleep moments, almost close enough to touch.

A world where Saihara wasn’t confronted daily with image macros that proved his understandable but completely irreparable damage of another person who may have been scripted to love him and who had left his awkward bandages in a neat pile on the bedside table like a memento before being annihilated. Lost among all the other hoarded items from the course of the game, buried in the grave of the academy.

Like evidence, Saihara thought as the fan spun endlessly overhead, that in the end hadn’t proven anything at all.


End file.
